Ned Lamont proposed on February 2 to purchase and forgive roughly $2 billion in medical debt owed by state residents. Like the debt forgiveness proposals, these credit decisions follow a wave of national publicity about the horrors of healthcare debt. As they have for 20 years, most policy-focused stories about medical debt lean heavily toward regulatory initiatives or legislative actions to take the sharp edges off of debt collection, or offer advice on how to avoid or manage medical debt (NPR, 4/14/22; KHN, 10/17/19; KRWG, 4/6/21). Weissmann did a multipart series on the history of medical debt, pegged to an interview with former attorney Dickie Scruggs. The series offers a good look at the history of medical debt campaigns, but again the framing is absurdly narrow.